The Annex Sessions presents Jim Santi Owen & Friends, produced by Javier Navarrette Music and SunJams

Wednesday, October 4, 2023, 6-8:30pm will continue our music series held at El Cerrito
Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex)  - “The Annex Sessions"

Jim Santi Owen & Friends 

Jim Santi Owen is an American percussionist, educator, producer, performer, grant writer and
funder based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Drumming since the age of eight, Owen began an
intensive training in the North Indian percussion instrument tabla in 1991, studying
under Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri at the Ali Akbar College of Music, the California Institute of the
Arts, and in India.  In 1995, Owen began studying South Indian percussion instruments
including mridangam, ghatam, kanjiraand morsing with master percussionist T.H. Subash
Chandran, and the temple drum, thavil, with K. Sekar.  At CalArts, Owen studied Jazz
with Charlie Haden, James Newton, and Tootie Heath and African drumming and dance from
the Ladzekpo Brothers. He studied North Indian music and tabla accompaniment from Ustad Ali
Akbar Khan and the art of accompaniment for the North Indian dance known
as Kathak from Pandit Chitresh Das.  Owen holds a Bachelor’s of Humanities from New College
of California and a Master’s degree in World Music from California Institute of the Arts.  He
served as the Music Director for the San Francisco World Music Festival from 2009 to 2014 and
is on faculty at Dominican University, The California Jazz Conservatory, LINES Ballet School, the
California Institute of the Arts, and the Ali Akbar College of Music. Owen served a 3-year term as
a panelist on the Zellerbach Family Fund’s Community Arts Panel, sits on arts panels for the San
Francisco Arts Commission, and is Co-Chair of Development for the Swapan Chaudhuri
Foundation. He served for six years as Chair of the Funding Advisory Committee for the Cultural
Affairs Division of the City of Oakland and was recently appointed as a Cultural Affairs
Commissioner by the Mayor of Oakland.
Owen’s work as a composer/producer is featured on Meta’s (Facebook’s) Sound
Collection which has released over 150 of his original and traditional world music tracks
highlighting the classical music of North and South India, folk musics of Rajasthan and Bengal,
traditional music of Ghana, and classical traditions of Iran and the Middle East. As CEO of Jim
Santi Owen Music, Inc., he managed a six hundred-thousand-dollar budget from Facebook to
produce these tracks. His music has been used on Facebook and Instagram for over 16 million
reels and other user generated content.
Jim Santi Owen has performed extensively with world-class musicians from a myriad of cultural
and musical backgrounds.  These include his gurus, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Subash
Chandran, and K. Sekar with whom he performed both in India and the U.S.  Other
internationally renowned artists with whom Owen has performed include:  Jazz legend Pharoah
Sanders, Nubian musician Hamza el Din, Double violin virtuoso Shenkar (L. Shankar) guitar
innovator Stanley Jordan, Kathak dance master Pandit Chitresh Das, sitar maestro Kartik
Seshadri, renowned Persian vocalist Sharam Nazeri, drum set virtuosoSteve Smith, minimalist
composer Terry Riley, Jazz saxophonist Joseph Jarman (Art Ensemble of Chicago),
Israeli oud player Yair Dalal, young sarode maestro Alam Khan, tabla virtuoso Bikram
Ghosh, kanjira exponent Ganesh Kumar, Indo-Jazz fusion artist George Brooks, didgeridoo
master Stephen Kent, devotional singer Jai Uttal, avant-garde pianist Myra Melford, Italian
percussionist Alessandra Belloni, Tibetan artist Techung, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Burmese pot-
waing player Kyaw Kyaw Naing,Rova Saxophone Quartet, Cuban pianist Omar
Sosa and bansuri flute exponent Steve Gorn.  Owen has also appeared on numerous recordings
in America and has recorded in India with ghatam maestro T.H. Vikku
Vinayakram and kanjira wizard Selva Ganesh. 

 
The Natural Grocery Company is proud to present this series in partnership with SunJams and Javier
Navarrette Music Productions.

SunJams  is committed to funding children's music education in underserved public elementary schools.
Your donation will help support this ongoing program.
All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely
impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 - any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to
our community! As always, your donation to SunJams 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt.

Javier Navarrette Music Productions continues to bring live music to several venues around the Bay
Area. Javier has been a professional musician and music educator in the Oakland Unified School District for the past 20 years. 

Over the past few years Navarrette has produced outdoors events that have
proven instrumental in enabling musicians to deal with some of the fallout of the pandemic and
shutdown that followed. 

Follow Javier Navarrette on Facebook , Instagram and YouTube. 


The Annex 

The Annex is a lively space for shopping, dining and relaxing. As the newest part of The Natural Grocery Company, the values are the same: a passion for vibrant community, healthy organic food and respect for the planet. 

"The Annex Sessions" is sponsored by the Natural Grocery Company in its commitment to serve the local community and help in the recovery of the local art scene. 

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days a week, inside the Annex you’ll find: A Cafe, Juice Bar, Deli, Wine & Beer, and more.

The Annex building itself embodies our values: a few of the sustainable features are: extensive re-use of materials from the pre-existing structure, use of recycled materials from local vendors, and reliance on the solar energy we produce here, supplemented with other clean energy sources.

COVID RELATED SAFETY MEASURES

Please be safe. Feel free to wear a mask if you prefer. 

TICKETS

Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex
counter and pay at the registers.

A seat reservation is encouraged, we are happy to offer you a reserved seat (limited seating available) if you RSVP with a donation that will go towards paying for the music. Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex counter. 

DONATIONS

SunJams is committed to funding children's music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program. 

In addition, we need to raise funds to continue bringing you this exciting new live music program. All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 - any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to our 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt. 

Please DONATE HERE

DURING THE SHOW

We will be taking cash or check donations at check-in, during intermission & at the end of the show. 

TIME

The Annex is open every day, please check their website for hours (https://naturalgrocery.com/annex/).


The show will begin at 6:00 PM and conclude by 8:30 PM.